take my word for it, he is one of the best, and behaved up to our best
traditions at a time when his own outlook must have been the blackness of
darkness...."

Characteristically Bowers ends his account:

"Under its worst conditions this earth is a good place to live in."

Priestley wrote in his diary:

"If Dante had seen our ship as she was at her worst, I fancy he would
have got a good idea for another Circle of Hell, though he would have
been at a loss to account for such a cheerful and ribald lot of Souls."

The situation narrowed down to a fight between the incoming water and the
men who were trying to keep it in check by baling her out. The Terra Nova
will never be more full of water, nearly up to the furnaces, than she was
that Friday morning, when we were told to go and do our damndest with
three iron buckets. The constructors had not allowed for baling, only for
the passage of one man at a time up and down the two iron ladders which
connected the engine-room floor plates with the deck. If we used more
than three buckets the business of passing them rapidly up, emptying them
out of the hatchway, and returning them empty, became unprofitable. We
were divided into two gangs, and all Friday and Friday night we worked
two hours on and two hours off, like fiends.

Wilson's Journal describes the scene:

"It was a weird night's work with the howling gale and the darkness and
the immense seas running over the ship every few minutes and no engines